


A to Z

by arianakristine



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universes, Canonical Character Death, Drabble Collection, F/M, sometimes, unconnected drabbles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:47:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29122152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arianakristine/pseuds/arianakristine
Summary: A drabble challenge for Gremma, using an A to Z format.
Relationships: Huntsman | Sheriff Graham/Emma Swan
Comments: 7
Kudos: 2





	1. A to M

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to create a little challenge for myself to help my muse and my time constraints, so here is the first part in a drabble collection using an A-Z format with a random word generator.
> 
> They are not connected. Some are AU, some are very AU, some are more concrete and others much more metaphorical. I hope you enjoy!

**A**

Alive

She never knew what a beautiful word it was before: alive. Alive. _Alive_. It was like a breath of cold air in a snowstorm, stingingly clean and relieving, shaking her to her core. 

She pushes past Whale to see for herself, and those cobalt eyes meet hers from across the room.

She wonders how the word makes her struggle for air, but also makes her need it less.

He is alive.

Cracked ribs and sunken eyes, but alive. Scratchy voice and weak grip, but _alive_.

“Savior,” he accuses, but playfully.

She squeezes, and thinks she’ll accept the title for once.

**B**

Blame

She shouldn’t blame him.

Of course she shouldn’t; he didn’t ask for this, no more than she.

She dreams of dark and damp, leaves and dirt and rot climbing her throat until the pain is real and fresh and she is screaming the last of her fear into her pillow. 

A worn bit of leather bites into her wrist, and she catches storm-filled eyes across the room in a corner too dark to make out any detail, wonders why she is buried with him.

She can only blame him for the feeling of being just as gone as he is.

**C**

Confession

The first confession is in a low breath, almost soundless.

She didn’t mean for him to hear it; his eyes are closed and his breaths had been even for several minutes.

Still, its echo weighs heavily on his tongue, demanding its own declaration to hers. But the penance for hearing it is his silence, he knows, and so he does not shift as she nestles against him, sleeps on.

He knows she finds love a scary thing, and cannot claim not to be frightened of its depths himself.

But now that he knows, he can wait, tend, let it grow.

**D**

Doctor

He never cared much for doctors. Healers or medics, they were called, back in the old world. He never had the means to hire one back then, and they were humans, anyhow. He wouldn’t have trusted them.

Here, he just had Whale for scale; he was not one to instill much faith in the profession.

But when the blond steps out from the operating room, hands clean and smug smile tugged across his face before a sharp nod of a yes, he could kiss him.

Emma is fragile like he’s never seen, but her eyes are bright.

His mind changes.

**E**

Estate

The estate is sprawling, majestic, cold.

Emma isn’t used to the narrow halls, the winding staircases, the rooms made of stone. It feels hollow, unnatural. The shadows get too thick at night.

She first sees him on the grounds, far from the echoes of the manor, an illusory image in the fog. He is a ghost to mock and mimic the gothic terrors she grew up with.

She knows him all at once, as if she always had and always will.

Their lips first meet where the trees meet the air, and she feels at home for the first time. 

**F**

Fuel

It doesn’t take much to ignite.

The thing between them had always had a spark, waiting for its tinder. They had each desperately hung on to a piece, until he didn’t care anymore to keep his grip.

Lust, that she was used to. In those cases, the fuel burned out quickly and she could move on.

She didn’t expect the stores to only grow within her, until the flames were indistinguishable from her own fire.

She didn’t expect to want it to consume her.

Instead, it warmed and cast its light like a beacon, until it augmented rather than destroyed.

**G**

Graze

Her fingers graze his arm, just touch enough from the callous of her fingertips to catch his attention.

He looks up, finding the crest in the ocean of her eyes and the worry buried inside them, and doesn’t need the whispered words that utter from her parted lips.

He captures her wrist loosely, finds the storm that lies behind the concern.

“Just a scratch,” he barely jokes, a piece of trivia from half a memory.

The starburst of color under his covered chest bellies that, but he stumbles forward, persists.

If it means her safety, it is a mere scrape.

**H**

Hypnotize

The blood is vividly red as it spiderwebs outwards and across pale skin, hypnotizing.

She traces the path with her eyes and then her hands, calling upwards to the wound that never quite heals. The heart that pulsates and beats out more of the viscous pain stutters but does not falter, cannot quite meet the looming darkness it wishes to retreat to.

This game has been played before, will be played again, splayed to define the past in mere trickles of horror.

It’s all she can do to hold the pieces together, to right them so they may fight again.

**I**

Ignorance

Sometimes, he wishes for ignorance.

Prays to a foreign god that he could be wiped clean of the memory once again, to remove the ache in his brain and heart and soul.

He wonders if she wishes that, too. There is an effortlessness to ignorance, one they haven’t had since curses broke.

But in the early morning, the strands of gold fall across his skin and they drink in each other’s warmth, feeling that truth acutely but managing to heal each other from it through touch. 

He supposes the price is worth the reward, finds that love trumps the pain.

**J**

Jump

She is at the edge, crumbling stone and crashing waves waiting for her with just a step.

He is at her back, and her fingers have flung back to catch his shirtfront in her grip.

She could jump. It wouldn’t be an effort. She could let go, and the past would be behind her.

She can’t loosen her hold, though, and instead falls back into him, waiting for him to catch her. He disappears into the mist just as quickly as she leaps into him, and she wakes gasping and drenched in her bed.

She knows then it was love.

**K**

Kid

“Kid.”

They are grinning at each other, mother and son, and the term of endearment slips from her as easily as any. They seem mirror images, matching eyes and grins, and his heart never felt so full.

It’s just a start, and he can only watch from the shadows of the in-between, but it is at least a start.

Maybe once the pieces fall back into place, when the curse is done and the evil defeated, he can find his own corner in which to fit with them.

But the beginnings of this beautiful relationship can only bring him peace.

**L**

License

The license lives in a manila envelope on a plain, unassuming shelf, tucked in between other important files and miscellany. It gathers dust, and is only yanked free on occasions it is called for, but there is no other indication of the piece of paper anywhere else.

Bodies fit together as one on a faded couch and loose, empty left hands hang from the backs of armrests. A house is filled with children’s voices and laughter, loneliness a distant memory.

The paper is forgotten, sits stale, even as the passion and the adoration never does.

Only they know it exists.

**M**

Map

He likes to map her out.

His hands and mouth will trace routes made over and over, finding new trails to discover, places of interest to linger on. Scars become stories, ones to press into some guidebook he builds in his mind.

She knows the difference from his touch and his patience, the seduction versus the exploration even when the two might meet from time to time.

He knows before her any time her body changes through the years, but she feels the worship of it before she can be self-conscious.

She hopes her maps make him feel the same.


	2. N to Z

**N**

Navel

He buries his head into her navel, and hot tears soak her skin. Words are muffled into her, indiscernible, words she doesn’t need but he gives anyway.

She stands stoic, arms firmly by her side, pretending she isn’t fighting her own. She stares hard into the mist, waiting for her vision to correct itself, waiting for her walls to brick up.

Instead, something inside her, at the pit of her stomach, dislodges. She lets a sob escape, and she ducks her head down.

Her hands shake, and she lets out a shuddered breath when she tangles them in his hair.

**O**

Outside

The pattering of rain sounds outside, and a slow piano tunes in the other room from a forgotten radio.

In their room, it is warm, cozy. They are buried under blankets and relishing in the grey of the mid-morning storm.

Her breath is warm and sweet from the cocoa she had earlier, and her eyes echo that sentiment as she looks up at him in half-asleep wonderment.

He has never felt this type of peace anywhere but under the stars and amidst his wild family, a lifetime ago.

He is careful to curl her closer, to keep the feeling longer.

**P**

Package

She greets the small, brown package with an absent ‘thanks’ to the delivery person disappearing down the hall.

She takes it in, shifting its weight and leaving it next to a filled plate. She ignores it while she readies herself and son for their day, unbothered.

When Henry is safe at his Manhattan school, she grabs a scissors and snips the sealed edges with a soft scraping sound.

The contents shakes loose into her open palm, and the cool metal sits facing up – a badge. One she stares at until she sees cobalt eyes instead.

Storybrooke. It’s from Storybrooke. _Graham._

**Q**

Quality

The first kiss is searing, unasked for, all teeth and passion, aching plea. She rips away, not after closing her eyes, she swears. She tastes him for hours later, refuses to wash him out, claims it anger that makes the choice.

The second kiss is softer, sweeter. Slow, then burning. Intense. A mutual decision, a drop of pretense. The thirst grows, until she cannot give him up for air. It stops abruptly, and Emma can’t help but crave more, even as concern bleeds first.

The third kiss never arrives, but it is not the quantity of them that haunts her.

**R**

Reception

The reception is icy, strangely, eerily so when she arrives with his hand in hers.

A dark glare sets from the back of the diner, tracing his form with rage barely contained.

She calls to the others first, puzzled by the strain on their faces. Can’t they see? A shock, a wonder, a goddamn _miracle_ that he’s here.

But tones remain cool, detached, and the chanced looks to the glowering mayor shows the reason.

She sets her spine. If the solution is one or the other, she has made her decision.

She will be sure all will know exactly that.

**S**

Seam

His thumb rolls across the seam of her reddened lips, and she parts them willingly, taking his mouth just as simply as she gives her own.

His hands plunge through her hair, and her own tangle in his shirtfront, ripping down. He sucks a breath in through his nose, unwilling to part where his skin meets hers but he finally follows down to find more of it.

Teeth run along her collarbone, and threads pop open from their confines at the waist of her skirt.

Her head lolls back, and she twists into his hold: closer, closer, and closer still.

**T**

Tire

He doesn’t tire of this.

He loves sleeping next to only Emma, of course. He has long since memorized the patterns of her breathing, cannot sleep without it.

But there are midnights where he must scoop up a shivering body to lie between them, where messy dark curls mix with her blonde ones, arm slung over her neck to pull her close and small, slack fingers reaching back for him.

He lays an arm to rest on Emma’s hip, one that shelters her underneath as she kicks out. He grins tiredly, happy to play the protector for this princess’ dreams.

**U**

Undress

He feels undressed by their gaze, peeled back layer by layer from the very act of their stare.

Unnerved, guarded, he pulls at his collar and ventures closer to her side.

Her gown glitters in the candlelight, and she is a vision that dances from one conversation to the next. He feels unmatched and out of place, an imposter in their midst.

She asks for help with the corset ties later, and sighs her tiredness. She worries aloud that she doesn’t belong; he kisses the disquiet off her face.

For everything, they are at least matched, the two of them.

**V**

Veil

Under the veil of night, the trees were foreboding. They stretched their arms upwards in their bare, dormant state, cloaking the light of the pale half-moon.

Her hands were like ice, and she pulled the hood around her closer, scanning the woods for signs of life.

A grip of fear caught the breath in her chest, panic dying as she caught the red eye of the beast.

“There you are,” she breathed even before she turned to find her lover.

He held her close, and the cold melted from her as she embraced him in the shadow of the wolf.

**W**

Weakness

He always considered it a weakness, the fact that he cared.

It had lost him his security, his family, his heart. It had cost him his freedom, his _life_.

So he pulls away when he finds firm ground beneath him once again, pretends that he could be the misanthrope he had been once more.

He ignores the pain plain in her eyes when he rejects her open hand.

But when she collapses, pale and cold against the ground as her magic extinguishes, every last bit of the resolve crashes down.

He is weak, perhaps. But it will make him strong.

**X**

X-Ray

She frowns deeply at the X-ray, shoots a glare at her children. The doctor points out the jagged lines across the ulna.

The tiny boy peeks from behind a mop of sandy hair, sad eyes just like his father’s.

“It was my fault,” both her sons say in unison.

“We’ll discuss it later,” she says in her sternest voice, leftover panic in her tone.

They drive home with the smell of fresh plaster filling her yellow bug. “You can’t scare me like that,” she demands.

“It was an Operation,” her eldest explains stubbornly. “We were trying to find his wolf.”

**Y**

Yearn

She knew what it was to yearn for something.

She spent her entire childhood seeking a family with a passion that made her heart collapse under the weight. Even behind bricks, her heart had yearned for this.

So when she looks over her family, strange and broken but stitched together through sheer willpower, she feels anxiety creep into her chest.

What if she lost this? What if it is dragged away, just as before?

He only listens when she whispers her fear later, brushes her hair in long strokes, nods. He kisses her forehead and says, “It’s my fear, too.”

**Z**

Zoom

The sound of the Zoom call was so mind-numbingly familiar that she pushed her head into her palm and glared into the camera as she clicked to let the person in from the virtual waiting room.

The screen loaded, and the smiling face of her parents appeared. Emma waved, and adjusted the baby in her lap, listening as Snow cooed and David tried to press in to see.

The weekly catch-up was over quick.

“I miss them,” she admitted tiredly as she passed along the infant.

“We’re keeping them safe,” he said, brow creased with worry.

“Yeah.” Pause. “Still.”

“Still.”


End file.
